


The Contract

by Beyond_The_Walls



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Blood Kink, Bloodplay, Enemies to Lovers, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Reader is a Witcher, Slow Burn, Swordplay, Takami Keigo | Hawks Acts Like a Bird, Teratophilia, Wing Kink, Witcher Contracts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:27:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28140897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beyond_The_Walls/pseuds/Beyond_The_Walls
Summary: In Western Velen, you investigate a small village raided and ransacked by cannibals, only to find that their presence kept at bay something malevolent. Killing them begins a chain of events that leads you to an ancient forest spirit and the discovery of sentience among monsters.
Relationships: Takami Keigo | Hawks/Reader
Comments: 9
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note: POV is meant to be as gender neutral as possible, including honorifics/terms used towards the reader: (ser/serrah, Master Witcher, mutant) and yes women can be Witcher’s in this AU
> 
> Also i’m offended that teratophilia is not a tag >_>
> 
> i love the witcher and i love hawks to BISHBASHBOSH i’ve combined ‘em, enjoy!

In the face of the villager’s anger, your horse remains still and calm as you tuck a leather pouch of coin into one of the saddlebags. They hurl insults and blind fears at your back as though they’re throwing daggers, hoping they can penetrate the armour and find your heart. They won’t, but they’re giving it their best damn shot.

You swing up into the saddle in one motion, where you have a clearer view of the crowd. Their upturned faces are moulded into visages of fear and hatred, but you cannot bring yourself to wish ill upon them, no matter how they may treat you. It’s not their fault; in the midst of poverty, starvation and war, terror is easily born, nurtured by the suffering of the people. They seek a scapegoat, a pincushion; someone who, while maybe not inherently evil, can take the fall for all of the wrongs they have endured.

You don’t blame them. If a King marches faceless armies upon quiet villages, burning houses to the ground, trampling crop fields and slaughtering those in their path, they have every reason to seek answers. Unfortunately, you do not have them, so your silence only stokes their accusations further. To think you came to this damned borough to kill an Ekkimara. The vampire had been stealing virgin girls, locking them up in the catacombs deep below a nearby missionary chapel and using them as its personal blood bank for weeks. The original report had been of a spectre of some kind, based on the wailing heard from the graveyard at night, but finding the truth was so much more horrid.

The mangled, drained corpses of those girls live inside your skull like maggots inside a rotting fruit as you gaze blankly at the crowd. Despite your understanding, you still resent their baseless hatred of you, and of your kind. Passing comments and sideways glances in dark taverns are manageable, but having to ride through a group of people yelling profanities and accusations after you shed blood and sweat to kill a creature few others could deal with?

It stings like a knife to the ribs.

“Master Witcher!”

The sound of running footsteps makes you pause on the bridge leading out of town. A shift of the reins over your horse’s neck makes it turn a tight circle to face the young man hurrying up the road. The crowd has already started to disperse now that the dreaded Witcher is finally on their way, but a boy barely out of his teens holds no fear when approaching you. Only pain. 

He removes his hat and holds it to his chest. A sign of respect or subservience; either way, it’s dizzying compared to the attitude of his fellow townsfolk.

“I’m sorry for thems’ lot, ser,” he tells you, unable to meet your eyes, “They’s not got a lot, and now they’s got even less. People’s ma’s and daugh’ers pulled out’a tha’ tomb...”

He pauses. You can hear the gulp he gives, trying to clear his throat of emotion and a rising pang of nausea.

“Me young sister, she were one of ‘em,” he explains  
, “She were always such a gen’le soul, ne’er ‘armed a thing in ‘er life, you see. It seems unfair, don’t it? Tha’ people like ‘er end up in places like tha’.”

You don’t reply. You don’t have to. He’s talking more to himself than he is to you, skating around what he really wants to say.

“I don’ want no one else to suffer tha’, so I wan’ you to take me on as yer charge. I wan’a learn how to fight like you, to kill creatures that tear apart families an’ slaughter innocent people.”

He looks at you then. He’s just a boy, angry and afraid, wanting to defend that which he loves. You understand the sentiment, but it’s an idiotic one. It’s the same kind of self-sacrificing foolishness that ends with young men being pike-mounted warnings upon enemy defences.

“If you weren’t deterred by how your village treated me, despite having killed an Ekkimara and taken half the pay promised, then you’re a fool,” you say, jaw wound tight with irritation, “Leave killing monsters to the professionals, if you actually have the coin.”

He turns his face down from you, and there’s a tremble to his shoulders so subtle it may have been missed by normal eyes, but you watch him vibrate with silent rage. It’s not the answer he wanted; he wanted you, famed monster killer and despised mutant, to validate his self-fulfilling need to be a hero.

From the sheath stowed behind your horse’s saddle, you pull a Novigrad longsword, looted from a destroyed supply cart found at the side of the road. It is no comparison to the swords you carry, but it is finely crafted all the same, probably made for a high-ranking official or Captain of the Guard. Holding the blade carefully, you extend the hilt out towards the boy.

He nears like a doe, wide eyes and cautious. Not the kind of material for a Witcher’s charge, but with enough determination and the right training, he could do *something* to aid his people. The tip of the blade hits the ground heavily when he takes the pommel - he didn’t expect it to be so heavy, but with his other hand secured on the hilt and a shuffle of his weight onto his dominant leg, he lifts it.

“You’ll kill nothing without the right command,” you instruct, “Not military, they have neither the patience nor requisite skill. They’ll just train you as a soldier, not as a swordsman. Find a mercenary, have them mentor you. You’re no knight, and you certainly could not be a Witcher, but with experience and practice, you could at least know how to wield a sword.”

“Thank ye, ser,” he blurts out, but you’ve already turned the horse away and set off down the road in a brisk trot. The sad truth is that he had a better chance of survival without a sword, but it’s too late to change what you did now. Besides, if someone hadn’t planted a sword in your hand and told you to fight until your dying breath as a teenager, you would never have become a Witcher.

•

It’s a days ride at a steady canter to reach the next village, if it could even be called that. Old houses of wood that bulges with damp and rot collect in the centre of several small crop fields, their rooftops sagging and chimneys coughing out smoke. Destroyed shanties and outhouses strive against weather and time. At first, the only sign of life is the few geese who scatter, trumpeting angrily, as you ride the main road through the settlement.

The first person you come across is an old man, perched on a bench outside what seems to be a tavern. Mud cakes his bare feet and calves and his clothes drown a body that has had hunger written several times over upon the skin. He puffs slowly on a long pipe, the stink of tobacco filling your nose as you halt in front of him. He peers at you silently for several moments. Perhaps it was the wolf’s medallion, or the pair of sword hilts mantling your left shoulder, but when he realises who you are, he tells you,

“Ain’t no business for yer kind ‘ere, *mutant*.”

He spits out the last word like it’s bitter fruit, letting it land at your feet and taunt you in the silence that follows. You glance around the nearby buildings; clothes hang on lines, buckets stand by the well, the geese collect near a spilt bag of grain. It seems to be a populated village, and yet this man is the only living soul you’ve seen so far.

“Where is everyone?”

“Wha’s it to you, eh?”

You fix the man with a stare. He’s being intentionally difficult and, after the journey you had following the incident at the previous borough, all you want is a drink and a bath.

“Was hoping to find food and rest here. Can’t imagine you’re the local innkeep.”

He snorts down through his nose, then rises to his feet. The exertion of it weighs heavily on his bones as he shuffles towards you, hacking up phlegm and spitting it into the dirt. Your nose wrinkles under the shade of your hood.

“Not nice enough for ye, Witcher?” he cackles, hobbling past you, “Prefer some wench tha’ can serve ye a drink an’ let you plough ‘em the night through as payment?Hah!”

He disappears between a couple of nearby buildings and you find yourself staring after him for some time. So much for a welcoming committee. No wonder the place is so barren.

Not wishing to make your horse trudge any longer through the gathering darkness, you dismount and lead her to the nearby trough and hand built lean-to that provides cover from the beginnings of rain. With her secured to the corral, you remove her heavy saddle and martingale, then slip the bridle from her head to be replaced with a rope halter. Your hand rests in her forelock for several moments and it is there that you find peace. She stands still and pliant as you pet her head softly, a silent thank you for her hard work.

The squeak of working hinges makes you turn about, surprised to see a woman peering out of one of the windows that was shuttered. Behind her, the building is basked in a warm glow and the smell of brewing soup is divine. She blinks at you wordlessly, clearly not expecting to see two vibrant, snake-like eyes looking right back at her.

“I thought I overheard Wilhem talking to someone! Sorry for that old codger!” she calls to you, accent more broad than those you hear in Velen boroughs, “Come in, you must be cold!”

So there were people in this town, and living ones at that. There are at least a dozen in the building which seems to be the public house. Most turn to stare as you enter, likely unused to seeing a new face this far West, but few are bothered by your presence. Whispers rise up like flames around you as you wade through the warm, soft air to reach the woman who called to you.

“Unusual to see a Witcher this far out,” she muses, though there is no suspicion to her words, just a pleasant curiosity, “But we don’t turn down coin from hard-working folk here! What can I get for you?”

The blessed relief you feel when you take a seat on one of the tall stools in front of the bar is evident given your deep sigh and the slump in your shoulders. She smiles warmly at you and collects a steel stein to fill as you shuck off the weapons and cloak from your back, leaving your armour to catch the candlelight. The stein is placed before you, filled to the brim with what looks and smells like Cintran Ale. A mouthful confirms so.

“You get Cintra’s finest all the way out here?”

Her laugh is bright and playful.

“We have our ways, Master Witcher,” she turns to collect more things, “Besides, we have few pleasures to indulge in this far removed from civilisation, so we enjoy what we can, when we can.”

A plate of food is laid before you. You would have been happy with bread that wasn’t too hard, a hunk of cheese and maybe a slice or two of smoked meat to accompany it. What is laid in front of you is entirely different. Candied bacon thick with apple glaze, parsnip chips roasted and seasoned, two fried eggs laid on top of a slice of tender beef and a golden-brown bread cake still warm from the oven.

“Forgive me for being suspicious,” you tell the barmaid, “But you get hold of all this... how?”

She’s laughing again, taking a seat behind the bar to continue peeling and chopping apples.

“It isn’t a matter of getting hold of it, ser,” she explains, eyes on her work, “It’s a matter of knowing what to do with it.”

“And how does a woman running a local public house on the outskirts of nowhere come to learn a skill like this?”

Though she is still smiling, there is a more sombre pitch to her voice now, one that makes your gut lurch despite how tacky-sweet the bacon is on your tongue.

“My mother taught me, naturally. She was a cook, for many years, for a Cintran ambassador living in Oxenfurt, and you know how Cintrans love their cuisine.”

Through a mouthful of the finest food you’ve eaten in months, you hum in agreement. The two of you keep each other’s company as you eat. She answers any questions you have between bites of the delicious food and swigs of ale, and you answer hers in turn. Not many are concerning your occupation, though, which is a rarity, though she is curious as to why you’re so deep in Western Velen.

“Pardon my nosiness, but surely the bigger, better paid contracts are further inland.”

“You’d be surprised,” you tell her, “Monsters can be found in all kinds of places. Sometimes, where you least expect them too.”

“A very good point. There’s a small village just South West of us, along the coast, call Condyle. Heard rumours from passers-through that cannibals slaughtered the folk and took over the place. Might not be wyverns or ghouls, but monsters all the same, in my opinion.”

With another long drink of the ale, you contemplate the information.

“There a contract for the place?”

“Nay,” she sighs, rising to dump the apple skins into a bowl, “Place only had a couple buildings, one family to them. Could barely call it a village. And now, with ‘em gone, there’s no one wanting to liberate it.”

You finish your meal in silence, all the while thinking of the place the landlady mentioned. You’ve never felt much of a calling to certain contracts - it’s a matter of going where they take you, not being pulled in any specific direction. Destiny can stuff itself for all you care. And yet something about her story raises goosebumps along the nape of your neck, hairline of the shorn undercut bristling. Perhaps you should investigate the place. Besides, if cannibals really did have run of the settlement, it wouldn’t belong before they started roaming further afield looking for... fresh meat.

“Do you have rooms available?”

She turns from the pot of stewing apples.

“‘Fraid not, ser,” she shakes her head.

“Mind if I leave my horse under the awning outside so she doesn’t get wet?”

“No problem,” she beams at you, then furrows her brow seconds later, “Actually, I may have somewhere.”

Once you’ve paid handsomely for the meal and ale, the woman leads you from the inn towards a firmly built barn that stands behind, on the border of the village’s crop fields. She has an armful of blankets and an oil lamp that she sets down inside the building on the dry-mud floor. 

“I hope it’s alright,” her voice is small, as though she expects you to be offended by being put in here, “But it’s dry and warm and free of rats, at least.”

“It’s fine, thank you.”

She gives you a sweet smile, then bids goodnight to you and pats your horse as she leaves.

“Don’t look at me like that,” you grumble to your mare, to which she snorts and stomps a hoof, “Brat. Stop being stroppy and get some rest. I want to take a look at that village tomorrow.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seems that something else took care of the problem at Condyle before you could, but what could have done /this/?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, was honestly considering not continuing this since I’ve kinda roamed from the MHA fandom lately, but nah I still love Hawks with all my heart so it’s carrying on ;)

You leave before dawn. The sky stretching over fields of bowing wheat and bushels of crow’s eye is still stained with the darkest colours of night. The dawn fights back, though, and paints smears of sunrise on the horizon. Having rested well, with warmth and safety aplenty, both you and your mare feel a renewed sense of vigour. The pace she sets is brisk as the two of you leave the small settlement in search of Condyle.

You pass no one else on the road South West. It is barely even a road, in fact; more of a snaking path where footfalls have worn the grass away. Your horse curves herself easily between the trees as you follow the path, almost religiously, and you let yourself melt into the motions of her gait. Once the labyrinthine forest opens up to display barren grassland leading to the shoreline, she comes to a halt and huffs gently. Her teeth champ down onto the bit anxiously, as though she can sense why you came here.

Close to the sandy decline down into the ocean sit the few buildings that make up the tiny borough of Condyle. No smoke oozes from chimneys, no people go about their daily tasks, no animals graze in the pens. The houses look in relatively decent shape; certainly better than the appearance of Midcopse. Anyone wandering past this place would easily mistake it for a quiet collection of buildings and think nothing more.

But, even from a few hundred yards away, your whittled senses pick up the smell ; blood. Old, spilt into the dirt, dried out and then covered by more.

You leave your mare to graze at the forest’s edge. She watches you a few moments before dipping her head to snatch up the grass around her hooves. This time, she is not hitched to anything, offering her an easy escape route should someone, or something, try to attack her.

The closer you tread to Condyle, the more pungent the blood becomes. 

Before you step between two of the timber houses, you draw the steel sword almost silently from your back. There is no scrape of blade against sheath, only the faint sing of the metal past your ear as you bring it to block your front. Even as you emerge from the shadow of the buildings, there isn’t a murmur of disturbance in the area, despite signs that someone was here very recently.

A stone fire pit crackles and spews embers in between collection of houses, and a couple of upturned stools display evidence of a hasty exit. A soft squelch beneath your boot makes you glance down, and you find that the parched soil has turned to sludge where blood has all but flooded it. There was some kind of massacre here, you consider, as more obvious signs of struggle begin to make themselves clear to you.

The red feathers of a cockatrice or wyvern are scattered around the place, some even still jutting from hunks of flesh where they were torn clean out of the body. Similar to when two birds fight over territory, the whole mess speaks of rage and determination. There are claw marks in the soil, too, that grow considerably deeper the further from the houses they lead - the creature dragged something heavy.

Whatever plagued this settlement that the innkeeper had warned you of originally, it’s clear something else has rid of it before you could. You know, by the looks of how savagely scattered the blood is, that it’s time to take your leave. But something about those feathers sets your nerves alight with unease. They are not the short down feathers wyverns have on their underbellies, and neither are they the scaly, hydrophobic mantle of a cockatrice. They’re more like the broad wing feathers of a griffin, thick in the stem and more vivid than any you’ve seen before.

“Royal griffin?”

All encounters with griffins led you to believe that, due to their buckskin colourings, most grew feathers of black or with a sheen of blue over them, like a magpie’s down. You’ve never seen red-winged griffins before. Curiosity overtakes your normally logical nature and you stoop to take one of the feathers from the floor, then twirl it slowly in your fingers, admiring the colour from all angles. It’s the length of your hand and almost as broad, and even then it isn’t the largest laying around.

With it still in hand, you wander over to another that is buried in the wooden beam that edges one of the houses. It’s arm’s length, at least, and rigid where it sticks out of the wood. It takes a firm-gripped yank to dislodge it from the beam. Despite the sleek, soft appearance of the feather itself, you find its edges unnaturally sharp. Perhaps this came from an elementa that could harden its feathers to stone and use them as weapons - how else could something normally so soft cut three inches deep into a solid wood surface.

You barely feel the rasp of your skin parting when you touch your palm to the edge of the feather. There’s something of a sting but, asides that, nothing else. The sight of blood trickling down your wrist, wrapping around your forearm like a crawling vine, confuses you. But it is accompanied with a rush of wind that thunders between the trees, sending your horse bolting towards you. Limbs bow and creak following the almighty howling and there, beneath pounding hooves and groaning old oak trees, is a sound that you feel in the pits of your stomach.

A roar.

An ungodly, guttural roar that makes the houses around you shudder and the ground feel as though it is beginning to drag you down, ready to swallow you. You have never heard a noise like it before, but you know what it means.

Whatever creature is responsible for this carnage, you are currently stood in _its_ territory, trampling over _its_ kill, touching _its_ property.

You are not equipped for a fight with a monster today - no potions lay brewed and ready in the saddle bags and no oils for your silver sword but, worse than that, you have no information on the beast in the woods, either. All you know is that it has killed for sport, because the bodies of the cannibals, despite being torn into pieces, are still laying scattered around the borough. None have been stripped of meat or even pecked at. 

As you stand, contemplating the situation, amidst the dismembered corpses, you feel something fix on you from afar. Between two buildings, you have a direct line of sight to the forest. It is dark between those trees; unnaturally so. There is something there. A hulking mass right at the edge of the tree line, blocking light from the canopies of leaves. It is poised, ready, waiting. You see no eyes, no features, no definite outline, but every nerve in your body sparks and dread works it’s long, cold fingers between your ribs to clutch your heart. 

A Witcher should never find themselves in this position. You should always have the upper hand. No one, neither creature nor man, should ever look upon you the way a wolf looks upon a rabbit. You are not prey. You are an apex predator. You always have been. 

Until this moment, as a creature you cannot identify fixes you with eyes you cannot see. A cat waiting to pounce on a mouse. This is the wrong way round. You are in danger. Danger. Danger!

Your body breaks from the statue of anticipation it was becoming as your Witcher senses come rushing back to you. You hear the snap of twigs breaking beneath a foot that moves, and the rustle of feathers settling into place, ready to take flight, the snort of an animal about to give chase. The creature is coming for you. 

You see only an edge of broad, red wings before you’re bolting to your horse. She dances anxiously on the sand and barely allows you time to settle into the saddle before she’s taking off down the shoreline. She gallops as though the devil is on her tail, neck set long and low and ears pinned back against her crest. She too heard the emergence of the beast from the woodland, and no doubt also hears the beating of powerful wings overhead.

As your mare follows your pull on the reins and sets to galloping along the grassy track, you dare a look overhead. For all the contracts you’ve taken, the years of combat you’ve seen and the creatures you’ve encountered, none of it prepared you for what you see chasing you down.

A Royal Griffin. Twice the size of any matriarch you’ve ever seen - you didn’t even know they could grow so large this side of the mountains - and more beautiful than any other of it’s kind you’ve encountered. Were it not so horrifying to see such a huge beast, still covered in blood from it’s latest slaughter, hot on your heel, you’d be in awe of its snow-white coat and red feathers that block out the sun as it extends them.

The sharp turn your mare takes jostles you out of admiring the monster. She diverts from the worn track and turns onto a wood bridge that crosses a wide neck of the river. You hope, given the river most likely marking the edge of the Griffin’s territory, that you will turn round to see it stood on the shoreline, or circling overhead, angry but not enough so that it will chase you beyond its domain. What you see, instead, you do not have time to react to.

It plummets from the sky and onto the bridge. Boards crack and collapse into the river under its weight, claws lodging deep in the wood. Those talons are the size of your hands, at least, and you spy a deadly sharp dewclaw above the foot that is somewhere between a bird’s and a dog’s; covered in the white fur, but with long toes ideal for clutching and gouging prey.

Your horse skitters back over the boards, throwing up her head in panic. Despite her broncing, you remain seated deep in the saddle, knowing that to be thrown off would most certainly equal death. The Griffin’s bulk fills the whole bridge and, when it dips its head and lifts its hackles in challenge, you know that the only way is back - back into _its_ territory.

Those eyes of acerbic yellow burrow into you as it growls, deep and dark, in its throat. Then a rumble comes, beginning in its stomach and being pushed upwards with great power until its beak opens wide to release another gut-churning roar. The noise reaches into every possible frequency - deep, raging baselines and shrill, scraping cracks. You can see all the way into its throat, where soft, wet flesh trembles with the sheer force of the sound it makes.

Your horse rears so high, you cannot stay seated. She almost keels over backwards with how high onto her back hooves she launches herself, and you’re thrown to the bridge with a straight-backed landing that knocks air out of your lungs. Wheezing in pain, you watch helplessly as the mare takes off back the way the two of you came. As you watch the trail of dust she leaves settle, boards creak in front of you. The Griffin closes in, presumably revelling in its catch rather than immediately going for the kill.

Every step closer it takes is punctuated by the groan and snap of another plank of wood. It gathers itself before you, feathers ruffling outwards and a crest rises at the back of its skull, spreading out curved primaries that shimmer gold as they catch the sun. This is not the behaviour of an animal preparing to kill. Despite the chase it gave and the carnage left behind for you to find in Condyle, now it doesn’t seem interested in killing you. The way it displays its feathers - both the shining gold of its crest and the fearsome point of its primaries - almost comes across as a display of some kind.

And then it lifts its wings. They arch up and spread to their full breadth. It’s wing span is at least ten metres, the thought making your mouth go dry. You have never even heard of griffins growing so big, let alone considered seeing one. Where did this creature come from? You wonder if this is some kind of ritual it performs before eating its prey, but what happened in Condyle renders that theory null. Your head spins with theories as you watch the beautiful animal parade it’s wings and tuck it’s beak low to its breast. 

“Hold on...” you whisper, making the creature snort, “Are you... showing off?”

It barks out a noise of irritation, as though understanding what you said. That would be something; a quadrupedal monster with the ability to understand common tongue. 

“You want... what? An offering?”

It huffs. Feathers quiver and its wings filter scorching sun down onto you, casting you in a reddish light.

“Well, at least you don’t want to kill me,” you sigh, “But... why are you acting this way? Why not just eat me? Or drop me from a great height? Why are you displaying?”

It cackles and stomps a forepaw so hard that the whole bridge shudders and threatens to collapse into the fast-flowing river. You grip for the nearby fence post, though it will probably do little to stop you being taken by the water should the structure give way.

“Alright, alright, you made your point,” you insist, glaring up at the creature, “Yes; you’re very scary and very beautiful, okay? Can you let me go now?”

Not daring to lift yourself from the floor, you begin to, very carefully, shuffle backwards toward solid ground. It pursues ever so slowly, neck dipping lower to the ground until it’s long, hooked beak hovers over your legs. You stop moving. The closer it comes, the more you begin to see. The eyes that soften a little as it takes in your scent; the golden glimmer that hands on the edge of every one of its feathers, not just the crest; the way it’s head tilts one way and then the other, getting its nostrils as close to you as it can.

There’s a soft breeze around you as it folds in its wings from their mighty breadth, and the down around its face and neck settle back into place. A stamp of approval, it seems, on your scent. Every encounter with griffins and their sub-species lead you to assume that, if you ever were to get this close to one, you’d be beyond saving. 

And yet here you sit, with this creature’s head that is almost the size of your body, letting it sniff and inspect you to its hearts content. When it’s head stills and there are no longer any hot puffs of breath on your face, you wonder what it is waiting for. It’s still looking over you, though it’s body has dropped from the intimidating stance, as if expecting something from you.

“What a strange thing you are,” you murmur to yourself. The animal grunts gently, nudging its beak a little closer to you. You’ve seen this behaviour before in common cats, though they rarely come near you, but you’d recognise that sweet, affection-seeking gesture anywhere.

Swallowing down the assumptions you’d about their kind, you reach a hand up from the bridge and extend it towards the mixture of fur and feathers on its cheek. Those burning eyes remain fixed on you; a display of trust and approval. When your fingers finally thread into that soft down, all breath leaves you in one, swift rush. Your hand is only slightly larger than its eyes, and runs tentatively over the fur. It’s so unbelievably smooth and warm; not something you’d expect on a beast that left that carnage in Condyle.

“You’re beautiful,” you hum and, for a second, you’re sure you see those wide, summery eyes smiling at you.

The peaceful reverie is broken by the final, strained creak the bridge gives. Your heart, slowed from its panicked state, is once again in your throat as you and the animal are plunged into the violent rapids. You’re not strong enough to fight the water’s wishes and are pulled fast downstream. When your head bobs above the water, you catch a glimpse of the griffin hauling itself from the river.

Under again, water rushing into your nose and stinging your eyes. Up again, and the animal shakes off the water from its coat before glancing around, almost frantically. Just before you’re pulled below once more, it spots you, and gives chase down the river bank. This time, when the water’s angry current grabs hold of you, it pulls you fast and hard to the side of the river. Your flailing soon ceases when your head connects hard with a rock. Before darkness consumes your vision only seconds later, you see a large, clawed foot pierce the water’s surface.


End file.
